I just received this recall notice from Toyota. It states: "This notice is being sent to you in accordance with the requirements of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Toyota has decided that your vehicle fails to conform to a provision of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards as it relates to Load Carrying Capacity Modification (Addendum) Labels."
It then goes on to say that the load carrying capacity of my FJC has been reduced by 88lbs.. I assume this is the same yellow sticker I heard was on the driver's door of later models. Mine is a 2007.
Is this Toyota's preemptive strike to avoid any lawsuits pertaining to all of the fender bulges and breaks we read about all to commonly? Is seems unlikely that this is just coincidental.
cruzrman

Bikeman

10-13-2009, 06:29 PM

I doubt it's for the fender bulges. We just got a notice for our Highlander stating about the same weight reduction.

RockRunner

10-13-2009, 07:47 PM

I doubt it, I bet it has more to do with the differences between the European models and US. I would guess something weighs more on the US version so they have to reduce carrying load.

Maddmatt

10-15-2009, 05:44 PM

You might be surprised to know how lax the NHTSA regs are on GVWR statements. At a previous job (which will remain nameless) we altered the GVWR by simply applying our own bright yellow NHTSA stickers (which we bought on line) that said the GVWR was whatever we wanted it to say.

Now if there had been an accident that could be related to overstating the GVWR I'm sure a smart lawyer could have found some culpability, but we were acting well within the parameters of the law.

I even filed monthly paperwork with NHTSA listing the serial numbers of the stickers and what we changed the GVWR to. Nobody ever asked for any documentation or even the math behind our changes. We did do the math, its not like we were putting unsafe vehicles on the road, but we could have saved thousands on engineering and just put any number we wanted on the stickers. Kind of freaked me out at first.